Reading and writing metadata on media files using Exiftool

Exiftool is a platform independent command line and GUI application for reading, writing and editing meta information of images and media files. Metadata information can be GPS coordinates, camera settings, capture time, edit time, device name, flash details etc..

Installation

Exiftool and Exif usually comes pre-installed with Kali Linux and Parro OS. For other linux distributions like Ubuntu, Mint and Debian, install with

sudo apt-get install exif libimage-exiftool-perl

Exif

Run exif

exif

To view image metadata, run the command followed by the image name.

exif temp.jpg

Exiftool command gives a more detailed information about the image.

exiftool temp.jpg

To remove all the metadata from an image, use the command

exiftool -all= temp.jpg

Here you can see that all the previous image data has been wiped out.

Whenever you upload an image into our social media sites, you are uploading all these information along with it. Geo tags can reveal the actual location of a person using GPS coordinates. It reveals the exact details of the shot like time and date.

Some sites strip away image metadata when we upload, whereas some sites don't

Therefore, it is always a great idea to remove EXIF metadata before uploading a photo on social media.    

Hope you have enjoyed reading this. 
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